The 10th annual Microsoft eScience Workshop will be held October 22-25 at the China National Convention Center, Beijing in conjunction with the 9th IEEE International Conference on eScience. Discussions and presentations will explore how computing continues to take us From Data to Discovery. Each year, the workshop provides a forum for scientists and researchers to share their experiences and expertise with the academic and research communities. The eScience Workshop fosters collaboration, facilitates the sharing of software components and techniques, and defines rich, open scientific challenges. Microsoft has been actively pursuing research in eScience for more than 10 years; the book, The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery, provides a background on its many areas of focus.

New challenges facing scientists in a variety of fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy are as much about data as about computation. The Microsoft eScience workshop provides a unique gathering place for researchers from a broad range of disciplines to discuss the state of the art, identify fruitful research directions and define innovative implementations. We seek to address:

How can approaches developed in one area of eScience endeavor be adapted to create discovery in another?

What computing breakthroughs in data analytics, machine learning, and visualization are needed to bring new insights out of today’s ever increasing data deluge?

What new computational approaches are needed to address social needs such as transportation, energy sustainability, and crime that are currently challenging the earth’s most populated cities?

What new approaches are required to advance modeling in big data scenarios?